1,721,089 research outputs found
Employment-Based Health Insurance and Job Mobility: Is There Evidence ofJob-Lock?
Full text linkThis paper assesses the impact of employer-provided health insurance on job mobility by exploring the extent to which workers are 'locked' into their jobs because preexisting conditions exclusions make it expensive for individuals with medical problems to relinquish their current health insurance. I estimate the degree of job-lock by comparing the difference in the turnover rates of those with high and low medical expenses for those with and without employer-provided health insurance. Using data from the 1987 National Medical Expenditure Survey, I estimate that job-lock reduces the voluntary turnover rate of those with employer-provided health insurance by 25 percent, from 16 percent to 12 percent per year.
The Importance of Default Options for Retirement Savings Outcomes: Evidence from the United States
Full text linkThis paper summarizes the empirical evidence on how defaults impact retirement savings outcomes. After outlining the salient features of the various sources of retirement income in the U.S., the paper presents the empirical evidence on how defaults impact retirement savings outcomes at all stages of the savings lifecycle, including savings plan participation, savings rates, asset allocation, and post-retirement savings distributions. The paper then discusses why defaults have such a tremendous impact on savings outcomes. The paper concludes with a discussion of the role of public policy towards retirement saving when defaults matter.
Simplification and Saving
Full text linkThe daunting complexity of important financial decisions can lead to procrastination. We evaluate a low-cost intervention that substantially simplifies the retirement savings plan participation decision. Individuals received an opportunity to enroll in a retirement savings plan at a pre-selected contribution rate and asset allocation, allowing them to collapse a multidimensional problem into a binary choice between the status quo and the pre-selected alternative. The intervention increases plan enrollment rates by 10 to 20 percentage points. We find that a similar intervention can be used to increase contribution rates among employees who are already participating in a savings plan.
Mental Accounting in Portfolio Choice: Evidence from a Flypaper Effect
Full text linkConsistent with mental accounting, we document that investors sometimes choose the asset allocation for one account without considering the asset allocation of their other accounts. The setting is a firm that changed its 401(k) matching rules. Initially, 401(k) enrollees chose the allocation of their own contributions, but the firm chose the match allocation. These enrollees ignored the match allocation when choosing their own-contribution allocation. In the second regime, enrollees simultaneously selected both accounts’ allocations, leading them to mentally integrate the two. Own-contribution allocations before the rule change equal the combined own- and match-contribution allocations afterwards, whereas combined allocations differ sharply across regimes.
Does Aggregated Returns Disclosure Increase Portfolio Risk-Taking?
Full text linkMany previous experiments have found that, consistent with myopic loss aversion, subjects invest more in risky assets if they are given less frequent feedback about their returns, are shown their aggregated portfolio-level (rather than separate asset-by-asset) returns, or are shown long-horizon (rather than one-year) historical asset class return distributions. We study the implications of these results for the effect of financial institutions’ returns disclosure policy on risk-taking. We find that aggregated returns disclosure treatments do not increase portfolio allocations to equity in an experiment where—in contrast to previous experiments—subjects invest in real mutual funds over the course of one year.
$100 Bills on the Sidewalk: Suboptimal Investment in 401(k) Plans
Full text linkIt is typically difficult to determine whether households invest optimally. But sometimes, investment incentives are strong enough to create sharp normative restrictions. We identify employees at seven companies who are eligible to receive employer matching contributions in their 401(k) and can make penalty-free withdrawals for any reason. For these employees, contributing less than the match threshold is a dominated action that violates the no-arbitrage condition. Nevertheless, between 20% and 60% contribute below the threshold, losing as much as 6% of their annual pay. Providing employees with information about the free lunch they are foregoing fails to raise contribution rates.
How Does Simplified Disclosure Affect Individuals' Mutual Fund Choices?
Full text linkWe use an experiment to estimate the effect of the SEC’s Summary Prospectus, which simplifies mutual fund disclosure. Our subjects chose an equity portfolio and a bond portfolio. Subjects received either statutory prospectuses or Summary Prospectuses. We find no evidence that the Summary Prospectus affects portfolio choices. Our experiment sheds new light on the scope of investor confusion about sales loads. Even with a one-month investment horizon, subjects do not avoid loads. Subjects are either confused about loads, overlook them, or believe their chosen portfolio has an annualized log return that is 24 percentage points higher than the load-minimizing portfolio.
An Experiment on Index Mutual Funds
No full textExperimental subjects review four S&P 500 index fund prospectuses and then allocate $10,000 across those funds. We randomly select subjects to be paid for their subsequent portfolio performance. Subjects cannot access any non-portfolio services such as financial advice from their selected funds. Nevertheless, they overwhelmingly fail to minimize their index fund fees. When we make fund fees salient and transparent, subjects' portfolios shift towards lower-fee index funds, but over 80% still do not invest all of their money in the lowest-fee fund. When funds' annualized returns since inception are made salient, portfolios shift towards index funds with higher returns since inception, even though variation in these returns is irrelevant for forecasting future returns. We present evidence that investors in high-cost index funds sense that they may be making a mistake. James J. Choi David Laibson Yale School of Management Department of Economics 135 Prospect Street Harvard University P.O. Box 208200 Littauer M-14 New Haven, CT 06520-8200 Cambridge, MA 02138 [email protected] [email protected] Brigitte C. Madrian Department of Business and Public Policy University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School 3620 Locust Walk Philadelphia, PA 19104 [email protected] "S&P 500 index funds are mutual funds whose goal is to mirror the return of the S&P 500 index. The underlying portfolios of these funds are similar to commodities because they hold essentially identical portfolios of securities. However, like many other end-products that are based on commodities, S&P 500 index funds themselves are not commodities. These funds differ from one another through the services that are packaged with their securities portfolios and through other characteristics. Differences in services..
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